Persona 4

Ge-Ni-Us

Intermission 6: The Defeated

It was a lot like an elementary school, he realized. You had your 'free' time. You had your 'lunch' time and you even had your 'nap' time.

Only in this school, classrooms were individual and separated by thick steel bars and feet of concrete. Oh yes... and most of the teachers were armed to teeth and had no inclination to teach.

Of course, in -this- school, there was never any bell signaling that school was out of session. This was one school that you usually didn't leave without spending at least a few years here.

One Adachi Tohru couldn't help but chuckle at the image of all these convicted felons as mere elementary school brats. Instead of the orange jump suits they were all wearing, all these burly murderers and pale, emaciated drug-addicts were dressed in cute little primary-school uniforms.

With a sigh, he cut the thought off before he took it any further.

'Gods it's boring...' But, he supposed, that was probably part of the punishment. 'It's been almost... a year and a half...' He shook his head with a wry smirk.

He found it amusing in retrospect. But that was mostly because he'd already run out of bitterness a long time ago.

Those... kids... had beaten him entirely. His way of life had proven inferior.

"Hey!"

Adachi looked up at the deep voice of the person in front of him. A burly looking man with more piercing than the ex-detective bothered to count stood, looming over him. Beside him stood an equally brutish man whose exposed upper torso was criss-crossed with what Adachi assumed to be gang-tattoos.

'Great...Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum...'

"You'z the guy we heard 'bout? The blue that wen' souf?" It was the man with all the tattoo's on his body speaking now.

If Adachi hadn't been locked up in this concrete hell-hole for the past year, he'd have thought the man was speaking another language. Unfortunately... he understood all too well what the man was saying... and what he wanted.

'Blues' never fared all that well when they were on the wrong side of the bars. Throwing a cop into a prison was often times like throwing a steak to a pack of rabid, starving wolves.

And unfortunately for him, that's exactly what he was. A 'blue' that had gone 'south.' A steak set in the middle of a pack of hungry wolves.

Adachi merely narrowed his gaze at the two men in front of him.

"Hah..." It was the pierced man. "It's definitely 'im." He put his hands on his hips and lowered his face down to Adachi's eye level. "Whatcha in fer?"

The ex-detective sighed, leaning back against the iron table he had been sitting at. "Don't you think it's a little cliched to ask 'what I'm in for'?" He gave them a smirk he'd been practicing quite a lot since he'd been stuck in this prison.

A smirk that had more than a little tinge of insanity to it.

"Well..." He waved a hand. "If you really gotta know..." His sick smirk widened just a little. "For guttin' nine people. Ah... wait. Make that eight. Can't count that teacher. -That- was just some brat tryin' to copy me."

Both men, who had formerly been invading Adachi's 'bubble,' decided to take a few steps back. No one wanted to mess with a serial killer.

Adachi chuckled inwardly. The regular punks always backed down when he said that. He watched them mumble some excuse, as if that would save their pride, as they walked hurriedly away.

"Wasn't it just two people that you killed... Tohru?" It was an older voice that almost seemed to hold an air of refinement. Adachi turned to look behind him, spotting the voices owner.

"Oh, Boss." Adachi grinned normally."Guess you can see right through me, eh?"

'Boss,' as he was known around the prison, was an older man of about fifty. He was also one of the rare few who was -safer- on the inside of the prison than he was on the outside. An old-style Yakuza like him had far more than his share of enemies.

"Hrmph...Seen a hundred guys just like ya." He shrugged lightly. "You ain't no psycho. Yer just another sadist with a chip on yer shoulder. And I -know- you only got a kill-count of two till ya got caught."

"Yeah well... spicin' up the story can't hurt, right?"

"Hrm." The old man stroked his graying beard. "You keep scarin' 'em off and you might regret it one day."

Adachi shrugged. "And if I hadn't scared em off, I'd have regretted it by about my second day here." He turned to regard the older man fully.

'Boss' was the kind of man who seemed to naturally demand the respect of the people around him. The ex-detective knew more than a few of the inmates, and probably a few guards too, would give their lives to defend the old Yakuza.

"Anyway, what can I do for ya, Boss?"

"Actually, nothing." The old man shrugged, tossing down a newspaper on the table Adachi was sitting at. "I've always been curious though... How -did- you kill those girls? They never did figure that out, did they?"

Adachi smirked wryly. "Sorry Boss, but that's a trade secret."

'Boss' ran a hand over his beard again. "Yeah well..." He nodded to the paper. "It looks like -someone- figured out yer little hat-trick, kid."

Adachi blinked in confusion.

"Read the article on the main page." The Yakuza boss watched as Adachi picked up and began to read the newspaper.

The ex-detective paled slightly, as his eyes went wide. "Four dead in Tokyo over night. Found hanging from antena's and electricity poles. No apparent cause of death." He read the headline out loud.

"You got yerself another 'fan.'" He watched as Adachi put the paper down. The color-was returning to the face of the 'blue.' "Hrmph. I'm disappointed. Here I was, thinkin' you'd be more shocked..."

"Yeah well..." Adachi looped his hands behind his head and leaned back to look at the sky. "The way I figure it. Someone's sendin' a message."

"A message huh?"

Adachi nodded as he closed his eyes. "And it ain't a message that was meant for me."

-o-o-o-o-o-

A/N: Hiya all! Just another shorty intermission before all hell breaks loose! I plan to have quite a bit of fun with the upcoming chapters... so stay tuned!

Till next time, R&R as ya like.

--KW